The Roy Clark marlin tournament was ongoing at Rancho Leonero when cameraman Paul Sweeney and I arrived. We rode to the Ranch with Jack Nilsen of Accurate reels after arriving at Dos Cabos airport, and as we took refreshment by the pool in the mid-90’s heat, the first thing we heard was there was a lack of bait.

No sardinas; that was true. There were mullet, however, and some caballitos and mackerel. As we learned two days later, those baits were acceptable to billfish, as one boat released seven marlin and another found four. Other boats had one or two, or got zipped.

We weren’t in the tourney, however. It was still going when I left to come home. You could get the results from Rancho Leonero.

Jack Nilsen wanted to test the latest incarnation of his salt water spinning reel. He’d already taken blue marlin of over 400 pounds with it, but had made some changes, mostly weight removal changes, and said he had to try to break it.

The weather at East Cape in May was lovely as always, cool at night, and up to the 90’s in the day, with a pleasant sea breeze of five to 15 knots in the afternoon. Seas were flat and at times dotted with leaping marlin; dozens of ‘em. We fished them for two days and had a half dozen stripers in the spread, and I had one hit the jig as I was holding the rod, but none were hooked. We saw finback and humpback whales, and a few dorado, but little other life at the surface except for a couple of turtles. One was the size of a bushel.

I did catch a large sailfish that Nilsen thought might be between 100 and 120 pounds, and Jack got one on his spinning reel the next day. My sail took a mackerel seconds after we baited a marlin with it, and Jack’s ate a mullet. Both fish gave us a few jumps, recorded by Sweeney. Jack’s fish also appeared as we baited a marlin.

On two mornings we fished for roosterfish, slow-trolling mullet. We couldn’t find any concentration of fish, but we picked away with four small ones up to maybe 18 or 20 pounds. Fishing was slow. Tuna were far to the outside, not large enough to make us want to go out there. We saw no dorado, but someone got a bull in the high 40’s.

As we headed back to the Ranch on the last morning, our guide and Ranch foreman Gary Barnes-Webb pointed up ahead of the boat and said. “Something’s going on up there!”

We looked, and three frigate birds were diving at the surface a quarter of a mile up our course line, and something was splashing there. Panga skipper Guillermo kicked it up to 30 mph, and we roared to the spot.

There was more splashing as we approached, and Gary shouted over the motor noise, “That’s a big fish, a really big fish!”

By the time we reached the spot nothing was happening, and the birds had moved on. Foreman Gary threw out a large mullet anyway, and no sooner had it plunked in than there was an explosion of water on it, and Gary set the hook. His reel spun like a motor was turning it.

“Go, go!” Gary encouraged the skipper. Line poured off his reel. In a trice half of it was gone.

The boat turned around to chase the fish, but by then nearly all the line was gone. We got up to speed, and Gary started to get some line back. Then the fish turned back the other way again, running inshore along the beach. More line ripped off the reel. We got turned around before so much of it was gone.

The rest of the fight lasted about fifteen minutes, with the boat countering all the fish’s moves. We could see the fish in the blue-green water near the drop-off.

In a moment the foreman had the fish by the lip and gills. He hoisted it aboard, and we scuttled about the panga taking pictures and video. Then he put it back in the water. It seemed stunned, so he reached for its lip to revive it. When it felt his hand, it took off and showed good speed leaving.

“That roosterfish had to weigh well over 60 pounds,” I said to Gary Barnes-Webb. “I’m not used to seeing them that large. It may be quite a bit heavier.”

“I know the width of my sunglasses,” said Gary. “I’ll use the pictures to figure its length.”

Off again over the 81-degree water of the Cortez we roared, toward Rancho Leonero.

“The last time you hooked a fish it nearly made me miss my plane,” I said to Gary.

“I’ll take you myself if need be,” the former South African white hunter reassured me. As it turned out, we made our plane, just barely. A couple of hours later I was riding home with Paul and my wife Debbie, dodging the Friday evening traffic plugging I-5 between San Diego and Oceanside, home again, or nearly so, with another great East Cape adventure on tape, on memory cards, and on my mind. Thanks to John Ireland and his lovely Rancho Leonero for all, and for more adventures I hope are yet to come.